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Dessert

Adirondack Cornbread

A cornbread made with eggs, milk, flour, cornmeal, butter, salt, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Adirondack Cornbread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs separately.

  2. In a bowl, combine milk, flour, cornmeal, and melted butter.

  3. Mix in the beaten yolks.

  4. Let it stand for 10 minutes.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the egg whites, salt, sugar, and baking powder, then mix thoroughly.

  2. Pour the batter into long biscuit tins and bake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks add richness and fat, while whites trap air and set during baking to give structure.
All-purpose flour
Gluten and starch form the main structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse grainy texture and corn flavor that distinguish the bread from wheat-only batter.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and cornmeal and helps the batter set evenly.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor through the bread.
Baking powder
Releases gas when moistened and heated, lifting the batter so the bread rises.

The step that matters

Adding the baking powder and egg whites last. Baking powder starts releasing gas once it contacts liquid, so its lift weakens if the batter sits too long. Mix it in shortly before the batter goes into the tins so the gas is trapped as the bread bakes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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